In 2002, having just been paid for his job at a fish and chip shop, Brendan Clarke tried to buy cigarettes and gum with a $100 bill at a Warwick Street convenience store in Digby, N.S. The clerks asked him to show identification and then refused to take his money over apparent concern it was counterfeit or from an illegitimate source.

Protestation from Mr. Clarke, a black man who was 19 at the time, prompted a threat from the store clerk that police would be called, which struck Mr. Clarke as a good idea.

Expecting officers to tell the store clerks his money was good, he waited inside the store.

“They came in and things went sour fast,” Mr. Clarke said.

An officer punched him in the face and grabbed him by the throat; as Mr. Clarke pleaded with the clerks to help, the officer punched him five times in the back of the head, the store’s surveillance video of the incident shows.

The only thing I wanted was service

He took a knee to the gut, was handcuffed, dragged outside, pushed into an RCMP cruiser, had the door shut on his leg and driven out of view of a crowd that had gathered, according to a statement of claim.

Behind the store, an officer hit him so many times with pepper spray that a second cruiser was called because the officers couldn’t get inside and drive the contaminated one Mr. Clarke was locked inside, he said.

On Monday, a Halifax judge lifted the confidentiality order from a settlement recently reached between Mr. Clarke and the RCMP, showing the force agreed to pay him $248,000 and issue letters of regret over the incident.

As an African Canadian youth who grew up in Digby, there definitely was systemic racism

The settlement ends a lawsuit Mr. Clarke filed against the government of Canada, which runs the RCMP, and against Const. Geoff Quibell.

“I’m happy that after 11 years I get a letter of regret. I’m happy with the financial settlement but it’s not about the money, it’s about the pride,” said Mr. Clarke.

“The only thing I wanted was service,” he said. “I told [the clerks], ‘If you won’t serve me, at least tell me why?’ I thought my rights were being violated.”

He believes racism played a large role in the treatment he received, both from the clerks and police, although racism was not specifically alleged in his lawsuit.

There have been past complaints about the RCMP’s treatment of black residents in Digby.

In 2008, the force apologized to black residents for a senior officer’s actions against black women and a street fight between an officer and a black resident led to additional accusations.

That year, race relation activists presented “The Digby Declaration on Racism,” with recommendations for the RCMP to improve relations with the black community.

“As an African Canadian youth who grew up in Digby, there definitely was systemic racism,” said Mr. Clarke. He said when he was with two black friends they were treated like they were a street gang.

“There was always tension between the RCMP and some members of the black community. There were a couple of bad apples [on the police force] and those bad apples ruined the bunch.”

The RCMP had little to say about the case.

“From the RCMP’s perspective, the matter has been resolved with Mr. Clarke. The RCMP will not be offering further comment on this matter,” said Sgt. Alain Leblanc, a spokesman for Nova Scotia RCMP.

Mr. Clarke said he looks forward to putting the incident behind him. He now lives in Grand Prairie, Alta., with his fiancée and his three daughters, he said.

His lawsuit required special permission from the court to proceed because he filed it three years after the incident, after he reflected on the ongoing difficulties it caused him, said J. Gordon Allen, Mr. Clarke’s Halifax lawyer.

The suit was scheduled to be heard in court this week, but a settlement was reached. Government lawyers, however, wanted the terms of settlement to remain confidential.

On Monday, Mr. Allen convinced the Nova Scotia Supreme Court to publicly declare the terms of settlement, removing the confidentiality.

“It’s been very difficult for him and I think this will help his healing. The somewhat public acknowledgement of what happened through the resolution is a positive thing for him,” said Mr. Allen.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/rcmp-pay-n-s-man-248k-to-settle-lawsuit-over-unprovoked-beating/feed0stdclerkAfter three long years in a Spanish prison, a Nova Scotia fisherman accused of smuggling cocaine is finally freehttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/fisherman-56-returns-to-nova-scotia-town-after-three-years-in-a-spanish-prison-for-alleged-drug-trafficking
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/fisherman-56-returns-to-nova-scotia-town-after-three-years-in-a-spanish-prison-for-alleged-drug-trafficking#commentsFri, 22 Feb 2013 00:18:36 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=272575

A soft chair, some fresh Nova Scotia haddock cooked the way only he knows how, Tex, his golden retriever, wagging his tail every time he comes near, feeling the warmth of wife Sheree’s hand in his, these are the tiny wonders Philip Halliday has been holding onto over the past five days.

“I’m looking forward to having San Francisco pork chops,” he says.

He is looking forward. Not looking at the next five minutes, crossing off another day, crossing his fingers that Sheree’s voice would be there, at 12:15 each afternoon, crackling over a long distance phone line, building up his courage to stay strong in the belief that one day he would walk out of a Spanish prison, onto a plane and through his front door in Digby, N.S. — like he did last Sunday, after three long years — a free man.

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“I missed my family so bad,” Halliday says. “You try not to think about home. You try not to think about anything. But just to sit on a soft chair — everything is wooden and plastic in prison — and just to sit down somewhere soft, it’s, it’s…”

It’s over now, for a good old Digby boy, caught up in a great big mess, accused of being a drug runner in an international criminal network and arrested in December 2009 aboard a former Canadian Coast Guard vessel bound for Spain with a secret compartment loaded with 1,200 kilograms of cocaine.

A Spanish judge found Halliday guilty of importing cocaine last week and yet, in a surprise twist, immediately ordered the 56-year-old — who has maintained his innocence since the day of his arrest — released.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkoKGDJ6ca4&w=620&h=465]

Mr. Halliday’s Spanish lawyer has urged him to appeal the guilty verdict.

“We’re going to keep fighting,” Sheree Halliday says. “Philip is home now. We know he is innocent. However, maybe for the grandchildren — they might be teased about it — we said let’s do this.

“Let’s appeal. Let’s leave no doubts.”

Upon hearing word of his release one prison guard started jumping up and down, shouting: “Libertad! Libertad!” Inmates at Aranjuez, the facility outside Madrid that Halliday called home, alongside murderers, assorted thugs, thieves and dead-beat dads, lined the cell block’s staircase as the Canadian began the long walk out, cheering as he went.

Policia Nacional

Speaking to me from Digby Halliday grows quiet. Sheree, who fought for him, kept his name in the news, banged on politicians’ doors and burned through every nickel the pair had to pay for lawyers, is also on the phone.

She gently encourages her husband to take a deep breath.

“It’s OK, hon,” she says, and he finally says: “The prisoners were all hollering, ‘Philip! Philip!’ They knew I was innocent.”

Digby knew, too.

There were petitions, fundraisers, letter-writing campaigns, a Facebook group, a whole town, for the most part, of 2,200 making noise about his plight. There were murmurs, in some corners, skeptics asking the obvious question: how could he not be in on it? How does a guy who fished the Bay of Fundy for 35 years and knows boats, wind up on a boat loaded with cocaine and then claim to know nothing about it?

Policia Nacional

“You just need to know Philip to know he could never do this,” his wife says.

It has been a popular refrain around Digby for three years, something hard to put into words, but something that folks — and I met many of them during a trip to the tight-knit fishing community in October 2010 — would offer with a shrug and an assurance that if you just knew their Philip then you would know he wasn’t a drug runner.

He tells me now that, like his father, he trusts people. He wants to see the good. And when he got a job on the Destiny Empress, he saw the good in the men aboard her. Halliday was the only Canadian. Fourteen people have been convicted in connection with the international case.

“I’m a trusting person and, you know, I still am,” Halliday says. “It’s hard to be something different when you have been one way all your life.”

Paul Darrow for National PostPhilip Halliday was accused of being a drug runner in an international criminal network and arrested in December 2009 aboard a former Canadian Coast Guard vessel bound for Spain with a secret compartment loaded with 1,200 kilograms of cocaine

His carpenter’s job with Billy Freeman has been waiting for him. Billy told him: “You are a little late for work.”

Philip Halliday has big plans. He asked Sheree to marry him, again, the other night. He has been telling her for 2.5 years that he had a surprise. She worried it was something expensive. They don’t have money, any money — after selling a house, cashing out their life savings and sinking $150,000 into legal bills — for surprises.